Health Care System

A health care system supplies health-related resources corresponding to the health demands of a population. Health care systems are made up of the complex structures of hospitals, clinics, doctors, nurses, support staff, pharmaceutical products, medical devices, emergency response services, and payment systems that come together to improve the health of a population. Health care systems, as discussed here, are limited to direct interventions aimed primarily at improving health. This entry will first identify the components of a health care system and then move on to model different systems of health care delivery. Health care systems that fail to provide universal health coverage, like the system in the United States, generally underserve the LGBTQ population. In part, this underservice is a direct result of the ban ...